Dark As Film
by Pyrasaur
Summary: It was a quiet, lonely night in Detective Dick Gumshoe's office, but he didn't have to look for trouble, see. Trouble always found him.


I knew from the moment I laid eyes on her, sidling around the door and flicking her hair -- this dame was gonna be trouble.

"Detective?"

She closed the door and swayed closer, out of my office's shadows. Doe eyes, voice like an angel and curves that'd make a grown man weep: definitely trouble.

I leaned back in the chair, and rubbed my manly-stubbled chin. "That's me, Detective Dick Gumshoe, Private Eye. I'm a flatfoot, see? A sleuth."

"Oh," she asked, "You're an investigator?"

"That, too."

Silence, heavy as the smoke coiling in the lamplight, and she nodded.

"Well," I asked, "Miss...?"

"Fey." She tipped her head and stared at me, a long, deep stare like ripping open the gritty depths of my soul. "And I need your help."

"Everybody needs somethin', Miss Fey." I propped my elbows on the desk and gripped one of the stubs in the ashtray, mashing it harder -- damned things just never seemed to go out.

She frowned, and folded her arms under her chest fit to stop traffic. "Do you know the name Edgeworth, Detective?"

I knew that name, all right. Edgeworth haunted me, just hanging there at the back of my thoughts like a smell -- not a bad one exactly, just like a fine cologne lingering on everything and you pick up the other night's clothes and there it is, reminding you, filling your head with the kind of things a man thinks when he's all alone--

"I know 'im." I loosened my tie, just a little. "I hope yer not tanglin' with The Demon, lady."

Miss Fey stared harder and she was haunted then, with a ghost of old pain in her eyes. "That's why I need your help, Detective."

The city does weird things to men, creeps in and steals their minds away, turns them all to ruthless animals. I glanced away to the ashtray. If I'd been told pencil stubs smouldered for long-reeking hours, I wouldn't have believed it, but I hadn't thought electric pencil sharpeners caught fire, either. It's a crazy world we live in, completely mad.

Quietly, I said, "Yer askin' the wrong guy, Miss Fey."

She leaned forward, planted her palms on the desk -- no, really, those were the nicest sweater puppies I'd ever seen -- and her stare turned hard. "I can't beat him alone, I need evidence. Evidence you can give me, Detective."

I couldn't say no -- not to her. I couldn't make the words come out, and something stirred under the ice that lined me like the frost crystals caking the old microwave burrito you thought you had already eaten.

"It's crazy," I muttered, standing, striding around the desk, "Nobody can take Edgeworth down, he's the best this town's ever seen."

And Miss Fey stopped me with a soft hand on my chest -- the world slowed, the lamplight glowed warm on her and shone in her eyes.

"Everyone has their weaknesses, Detective," she murmured.

Smart dame, that Fey. I picked up her hand off my chest, held it and watched a smile bloom on her.

"I'll do it." Turning from her -- she was hypnotic, same as the view down her suit jacket -- I growled, "I dunno how, but I'll do it. You find someplace safe 'til this blows over."

She didn't say a word, just smiled thankful.

And as I swept out of the office, pulling on my battered old trenchcoat, battered like a man's heart after he gets to his favourite deli and finds them all out of pastrami and damnit, what kind of deli runs out of pastrami, I set my jaw and braced myself. The memories hung thick as the smell of burning pencil lead: the last time I saw Edgeworth, the electricity in the air and that sudden moment of truth where I knew I'd chase him forever. I stepped out into the dark, windy night and the memory of those eyes burned into me, like staring down the barrel of a revolver and knowing no fear, just adrenaline like lightning and the craziest urge to grab him by the frills and--

"Hey! No sleepin' on the job, rookie!"

Gumshoe jerked upright, chair lurching terrifyingly off-balance. "Sorry, Chief," he yelped, grabbing the desk for dear life.

But the chief had already vanished, and Gumshoe straightened, looking around at the station's usual orderly bustle. He drooped a little. And, scratching his head, Gumshoe promised himself Detective rank someday, someday.

"Who," came the chief's bellow from down the hall, "The _hell_ wrecked my pencil sharper this time?!"

He'd have to ease up on the movie rentals, though -- real life, Gumshoe knew, just wasn't the same at all.


End file.
